Event information

Causes and Consequences of Inequalities in Children's Executive Functions

Wednesday 5th March 2025, 13:30 - 14:30 (GMT)

This event is hosted by the Centre for Psychological Approaches for Studying Education (PASE).

Venue – Hybrid. Details of how to attend will be at the end of your order confirmation email.

Registration - Sign up for this event on the Eventbrite page. 

 

About the event

This event is part of the School of Education's Bristol Conversations in Education research seminar series. These seminars are free and open to the public.

Speaker: Dr. Emma Blakey (University of Sheffield)

Executive functions are core cognitive skills that support goal-directed thinking. These skills develop slowly over childhood and are thought to play a vital role in supporting school preparedness and academic learning.

In the first part of this talk, I will present my research showing that i) children from disadvantaged backgrounds from as young as age 3 tend to fall behind in these skills compared to their more advantaged peers and ii) executive functions indirectly explain early attainment gaps in maths.

In the second part of the talk, I will discuss preliminary findings from the first wave of the ‘Sheffield Early Years Study’ - a longitudinal study designed to understand why inequalities emerge in early executive functions. I will discuss the need for better theories on why socioeconomic circumstances relate to executive functions, and the importance of not stigmatising parents in the process of doing this research.